Mind Hunters

Today's SAW sounds like it should be great....several recognizable stars, plenty of action, a director known for fun action films...what could possibly go wrong? Ladies and gentlemen, I answer that question with 2 simple words: Mind Hunters. Time to get SPOILED....

The first scene shows us a woman drowning and screaming. The water then becomes rain, which is running down the glass of a car window. A blond woman is sleeping in the car, as someone furtively approaches the vehicle. He runs his gloved hand over the frame of the car, then draws trails on her window with his finger. Luckily she wakes up at this point, and he(Christian Slater) cheerfully asks for a ride.

They're both in law enforcement. He was questioning an old couple about some missing girls, and she was searching for clues under her own eyelids. Clever, these two. As they go over the details of the case, they spot a remote house that they hadn't noticed before, and decide to check it out.

There's a brief but amusing bit where Slater's character starts imitating some bobblehead dolls out of sheer boredom. This time, the female investigator gets to ask questions. Yay. No one answers her knock at the door, but she finds some spray paint cans and a car that matches the vehicle of the suspect around the side of the house. Hmmmm....

She rushes back to her partner to report that they have the case nearly solved, then they both hear a bloodcurdling scream from the house. They call in for back-up, then decide to go in alone anyway. The female cop finds a room filled with the hanging corpses of many animals. Mostly dead cats, but I also spotted a horse head(bookend?...go watch Student Bodies to get that joke... :) ) and a dog or wolf ), and other animals in the room.

The Christian Slater character(why don't they have names at this point?) scares the willies out of his partner, then they hear more noises coming from further down the hall. They head down a staircase and find corpses in the basement. They also find evidence suggesting that the killer might have shot himself, just as another tall figure rushes in behind them. He raises a knife over his head and stabs the female cop in the shoulder, while the male cop tries to save her. She dies, the male cop dies, and the suspect also gets killed in the mayhem. Wait, was this a 5 minute film?

Then, after a momentary pause, things start to buzz, lights come up everywhere, and they all sit up. It was a roleplaying simulation. Sheesh. The killer tells them that he thought they would never arrive, then tells someone named Harris that he's hungry. It turns out that they're all Feds.

"Harris" refers to Jake Harris, played by Val Kilmer. He's in charge of the "mind hunters", a slang term for the F.B.I.'s profiler division. Both of the agents we met earlier were on a training exercise, and now have names: Sara and J.D., which makes this the second or third time a Christian Slater character has had that name in a movie. Weird. Is he going for some kind of world record?

Anyway, Harris lectures them about being more vigilant and aware of their surroundings, and tells Sara that the perimeter isn't secured until they're driving back home. Harris even goes a step further, listing all of the details about the second killer that they missed seeing. Then JD implies that roleplaying exercises are pointless.

Back at the FBI academy, Harris delivers some fun facts about killers: For example, most murders are committed by people that know their victims, and most murders that are not solved in 48 hours are often unsolved.

As he wraps up the class, Harris tells the young profilers that he's taking them to an island called Oneiga, where they will be tested as a team. As the class wraps up, Sara asks how she and JD could have possibly saved the "hostages" in their last training exercise. Harris responds that they couldn't have, the simulation was designed to get them used to failure.

That night, most of the trainees decide to go out drinking, before their big journey in the morning. At a nightclub, they make a game out of trying to profile various party goers. The first trainee, Bobby, makes up a story about an attractive blond at the bar, based on nothing more than her appearance and the items sticking out of her purse. Another trainee, Nicole, adds a detail about cigarettes, but the group votes her down, on the basis that she recently quit smoking, giving her some bias.

Then Bobby and a fellow student named Lucas place a bet over how long it would take to get the blond girl's phone number. As Bobby heads to the bar to make his move, the profiling game continues. A British student named Rafe sees a well-dressed man at the bar, and guesses that he's a hit with the ladies. This is disproved when the man's boyfriend arrives, and they kiss.

After the profilers finish laughing at how wrong Rafe was, and Bobby wins the bet, Lucas reveals that he paid the blond to go along with whatever Bobby said to her. Yet another trainee, Vince, is busy drawing on a napkin. He seems to be angry about the way Harris keeps putting them these roleplaying simulations, then he tells Sara that he saw a note in his file that implied that Harris wasn't going to pass him for the course. Vince also tells Sara that Harris failed her for the course. Whoops!

The next morning, the students find a helicopter waiting for them. Harris welcomes them, then introduces one more guest for the island: Detective Gabe Jenson, played by LL Cool J. He's a cop from Philly, not an agent, so his presence is somewhat of a mystery.

As the copter approaches the island, Harris reveals that Navy SEALS use it for training during the week, but that he gets to have access to the facility on the weekends. Harris then tells them all to prepare to be dropped out of the chopper on wires, but that it was a joke. Wow. Hilarious.

The island is set up to look like any American city, as long as it's a city from 1955. Harris refers to the mock city as Crimetown, USA. As he shows his students the layout of Crimetown, Harris also mentions that one more guest has to arrive: thew killer, known as The Puppeteer. He's "killed 2 people already in Crimetown, and there's soon to be a third victim. But he wants them to have the night to themselves first, then start their search in the morning. Oh, and he promotes JD as the team leader.

They decide to go looking for the living quarters, and pass by several enclosed tanks of water. Gabe asks what the Navy uses them for, and is told that the tanks help divers assimilate to Arctic temperatures. Then they find several rubber duckies left behind by the Navy. The ducks have nerdy glasses drawn on their faces, and are marked as "FBI". Boy, I sure hope I don't die from my sides splitting with laughter. Or boredom, from the complete lack of ANYTHING HAPPENING.

Inside, they are shown state-of-the-art computers and lab equipment to use during the weekend. Gabe asks Harris what the point of putting them on an island is, and Harris replies that, by being isolated, they'll be able to think like the killer. Then Harris abruptly leaves.

That evening, they prepare a huge feast, and generally just have a party. Rafe comes out of the elevator in a Hawaiian shirt, claiming that he was told to "dress for an island". Boy, those writers sure know a good joke when they see one. I just hope at least one they saw got into the script.

JD and the others try to ask Gabe about what he does as a cop but he clams up, so they decide to profile him instead. According to their observations, Gabe is a guy who has issues with his parents, difficulty with relationships, and a need for everything around him to be in order. Gabe replies that their analyses tell him more about each of them than vice versa. Fun group.

Later that night, Lucas finds Sara sitting out by the "duck pond", looking all glum. She warns him not to push her into the cold water, and he replies with some nonsense about feeding the ducks. When she reveals that she won't graduate with the rest of them, Lucas tells her that his parents were both killed when he was 10. He reveals that it hardened him, and he took up, smoking, drinking, fast cars, and even faster women. Then he ruins the moment by saying, "Then I turned 11..." Stop trying to be funny, movie. It's just getting sad now.

Anyway, his story about his parents had a point. You don't get over your worst fears, you just continue to face them head-on. Deep, man. Which fortune cookie was that in?

The scene ends, and we see someone inside moving through the dark hallways, as Christian Slater is showering. Great, our first nude scene, and it's Christian Slater. was this thing directed by David Decoteau, by any chance? No? Good, then let's move on.

JD hears or senses the person walking around and turns, but no one is behind him. As he starts to relax, sexy Nicole pops up on his other side, revealing that they have a discreet relationship going on. Oh, and then they start screwing like bunny rabbits after Easter. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but shower-sex always seems like it would more dangerous than sexy, what with all the soap and slippery porcelain. Now TUB SEX....that sounds like a fun time for everyone!

Where was I? Oh right....Mind Screwers. The next sequence showcases some of the characters displaying their own hangups...Bobby, for example, sees the light over his bed flickering and buzzing, and can't resist tinkering with it. And Rafe is seen bouncing a rubber ball into the wall over and over again, in an annoying way. Oh, and Gabe, who already seems pretty isolated from the others, is seen out by the dock, just standing around in the dark.

Oh, and here's another nitpick I have with this frigging movie: Cats. They're everywhere. I'm assuming that they're all stray, but it's a FUCKING ISLAND!!! What, did they all don little kitty swim trunks, or scuba wetsuits, or something equally dumb? Seriously, when you see cats shoe-horned into a movie like this, it only means one thing: there's going to be a stupid jump-scare, probably involving a cat leaping out of the shadows at someone. You know what? This movie is starting to make some of the clunkers I've seen look fairly decent.

The following morning, Sara sees a dead cat hanging in the shower, nearly scaring her to death. So wait, just to be clear: She failed to notice the thing when she entered the bathroom, and even started brushing her teeth before seeing a dead cat? I think this movie is giving me dain bramage, as punishment for trying to make any sense out of it at all.

The others hear her screaming, and they all rush in. Good thing she wasn't on the crapper! JD moves in for a closer look, and finds a broken watch in the mouth, with the time showing 10 o'clock.

They all ponder over what it means, and decide that it's their first clue. They also speculate that the watch could mean 1 or 2 things: It's either a sign that something will happen at 10, or the killer has a thing for watches and/or time itself.

They get dressed and head outside to begin exploring for more clues. JD tells them to split into pairs, and make some noise if anyone finds another clue. Bobby and Rafe are the first pair shown, and they head into the local coffee shop. Once inside, Rafe immediately plays around with a mannequin, calling it "Little Bobby", and proclaiming him to be an all-American. As Bobby tells Rafe that he is warped and should seek help, Rafe whispers to the mannequin that he doesn't need a shrink, but someone in the group definitely does. Interesting...

The next pair consists of JD and Lucas, who are exploring a mocked-up house. There's rotting food on the table, as well as worm-covered mannequins. Their scene abruptly grinds to a halt, and we next see Sara and Nicole as a team, then Vince and Gabe, who each seem to desire to be working as individuals. When Vince passes by a window, he sees another clue, and shouts for everyone to check out what he found.

It turns out that he found a crime scene. There's a dead woman(mannequin), bloody in several areas of her body, and with wires through all her limbs. I'm going to go ahead and boldly predict that this is the work of The Puppeteer.

They all come to the same conclusion, which leads me to believe that I should apply to be a profiler. JD starts describing the crime scene into a tape recorder, As each team member is assigned to a different task, a radio starts up, and begins blaring some kind of novelty song for kids. JD moves to turn off the annoying tune, and sets off a chain reaction: dominoes start toppling, wires get triggered, things turn on and off....you get the idea.

The chain reaction ends with a tank of liquid nitrogen being turned on, turning JD into a cop-sicle. As the others watch in horror, he dies pretty much instantly. Of course, everyone freaks out, and accusations are thrown in every direction.

They bring JD's body back to the lab, and discover that someone has been there, and has left them 2 new clues. One is a book, the other is another broken watch, with the time reading a half hour from the current time. Plenty spooked, they rush to the boat to leave the island.

As they get onto the dock, the boat explodes. Sara is unlucky enough to be thrown into the water by the blast, and she goes into some kind of catatonic shock. Lucas dives in after her, and pulls Sara out, resisting all offers to help.

Back on dry land, Gabe lets his cop instincts kick in, and starts to question them all about Harris. While they all agree that his simulations and tests are pretty kooky, they also have a hard time believing that he would actively try to kill them.

As Gabe continues to push his theory, Vince "pulls a gun out of his ass". as one character puts it. Vince tells them that he carries his weapon at all times, especially since being confined to a wheelchair.

They head back to the main building, and break out some infrared goggles to scan the island. Meanwhile, Sara stays behind to stitch up some of the wounds Lucas received, because he was the closest to the bomb when it went off.

That evening, everyone except Lucas has gathered to share their theories about who wants them dead. The chat quickly becomes heated, as everyone seems to be accusing everyone else of murder. They all whip out their guns, then Lucas runs in, holding a bunch of papers.

The papers turn out to belong to Gabe. Not only does he have maps of the entire island, but he also has dossiers on each and every member of the team. As Gabe tries to explain himself, Lucas points his gun at Gabe's face, and a few of the other guns begin to point at both of the men.

Gabe stands up, then crashes to the floor. One by one, the others do the same, even Lucas. Apparently, the coffee was tainted with a strong sedative...but how did it affect Lucas, if he was searching rooms while the rest were drinking the stuff? Hmmm.....

They wake up many hours later, groggy and back in the mode where they all bicker like old ladies and accuse each other of doing stuff. Well, everyone except Rafe, who still seems to be passed out. As they sit him up, his head stays on the table, but his body continues the trip. Yup, the British goofball was decapitated. Oh, and completely drained of most of his blood.

That leads into the group suddenly noticing a series of numbers on the wall, written in what is probably Rafe's blood. Also, there are 2 watches left behind this time, implying that 2 people are soon to die. Now THIS is starting to shape up to feel like a good slasher flick!

Still wary of Gabe, they bring him into a bathroom, and cuff him to a toilet, near the floor. While they question him, Gabe confesses that he's not really a cop from Philly, but actually an agent with the Department of Justice. He claims that he was given the cop identity as a cover, and sent to investigate claims that Harris was a loose cannon with his training methods.

Obviously, they have a hard time buying his story. Lucas decides that they should look for the next trap, since it's set to go off in 15 minutes. He leaves Vince in charge of guarding Gabe, and both men just sit and glare at each other.

Sara and Bobby are left to examine the numbers and figure out what they represent, while Nicole and Lucas head out to look around the fake town some more. This leads to a montage, showing everyone tearing apart the town to look for anything out of place. Light fixtures, cigarette machines, stored food items....nothing goes unnoticed.

Then we go back to the stupid numbers. Sara theorizes that they could represent a measurement of something, but everyone else draws a blank. Then it hits her: since the killer is obsessed with time, the numbers must have something to do with time. They examine the numbers again, and Bobby announces that one set of numbers seems to be the speed of light.

Being the kind of dumbasses who know that the killer likes to set elaborate traps, they conclude that they should switch off the lights. Again, dumbasses, with a capital DUH. Turning off the light reveals nothing at first glance, so they use one of those UV light-thingies to see if anything glows in the dark.

Bingo! On their backs the killer has painted letters. The team has trouble making any sense out of it, perhaps because they never thought to check to see if Gabe or Vince had any letters written on them. If I were Harris, I'd flunk 'em all at this point.

Anyway, this whole scene is pretty much pointless. Thus, we head back to check in on Gabe and Vince. They both hear a noise down the hall, so Vince draws his gun and decides to check it out. Good for him.

He sees 2 of the light fixtures begin to spark, then both fall toward the ground, dangling on their cords. At the same time, a water pipe bursts, and the floor quickly becomes electrified. Vince manages to grab an overhead pipe and hoist himself out of the wheelchair, just as the water reaches his location. Good thinking, except that now he's dangling right over the water, with no easy escape route.

Gabe asks Vince to throw him a gun, and points out that Vince and he are both likely to die if he doesn't do it. After a brief dispute, Vince gives in. He tosses his gun to Gabe, who shoots the chain on the handcuffs, then shimmies along a ceiling pipe to the doorway. So far, so good.

In the doorway, he aims the gun in the direction of Vince, but ends up shooting evenly placed holes in a nearby wall. Using these newly created holes for his hands and feet, Gabe starts to make his way over to Vince, like a rock-climber. By this time, the others have heard the gunshots, and are on their way as well.

Gabe slips a bit here and there, but gets close to a fusebox. Vince, for the most part, is slowly slipping from the pipe he's been holding on to for dear life. The group upstairs finally get to the basement, just as Gabe finds the power and shuts it off. He and Vince both fall onto the wet floor, unharmed. Then Gabe and Lucas have a brief staring contest, and exchange a few less-than-friendly words.

With everyone safe once more, Bobby sees how it was all rigged together. As he reaches the mechanism to switch off the water and explain how it works, he triggers another trap. A steel-tipped arrow flies at Bobby, going right into his neck.

Lucas moves forward to examine the body, then becomes enraged. He turns to the group, daring any one of them to try to kill him next. Nicole speaks up, claiming that Lucas had earlier announced that he shut off the water supply. He counters with an accusation that it was her who neglected to do the task.

Anyway, everyone goes back to the lab to decipher the letters. With all of the letters now in front of them, they all take a stab at guessing what the message could be. Vince finally announces that it spells "CROATOAN", a word that was found after an early American settlemernt on Roanoke Island mysteriously vanished. Okay, time for another rant.

Vince has to explain that story to the entire group? With the exception the British guy and possibly Nicole, the rest should know the story. It's basic US History 101. Gabe even declares that he's troubled that Vince would know the story, as if it's some deeply covered-up incident or something. Which it's not.

The basic legend, for those of you who have never taken a 3rd grade US history class, is simple: A group of settlers formed a colony on Roanoake Island, and a small contingency went back to England for more supplies. When they returned, the entire colony had vanished, some even leaving uneasten plates of food out, implying that their disappearance was almost instantaneous. The only clue was the word CROATOAN carved into a nearby tree.

Anyway, this legend about mass disappearances has no bearing on anything else in the friggin' movie, so forget the last couple of scenes. I already have. Instead, the investigators break open a bunch of evidence kits, and start playing CSI....Crude, Stupid Investigation. Then we get one of those pointless "evidence collecting" montages that are in every single episode of CSI. Think it's dull to watch actors dust for print and tap keyboards on television? Try watching the same thing in a movie.

Anyway, the montage finally thuds to a halt, and the Inspector Clouseau Squad decides to get blood samples from everyone, to try to match some dried blood that was discovered under a corpse's fingernail. That gives us a "blood sample" montage! Okay, so every time they pad this movie with a montage sequence, drink some Red Bull. If your heart hasn't exploded by the end of the movie, congrats!

So they sit around while the blood samples are analyzed by the computer. Nicole whines about wanting a cigarette, then Gabe and Lucas decide to throw more accusations at each other. Can't we all just get along??? As the test is finishing up, everyone puts their gun on the table. Even Vince has his taken away. When the results come back, the fingernail sample turns out to belong to...

SARA!?!

Yup, Sara.

The others all snatch up their guns again, and Sara is forced to lay on the ground. She insists that the killer is someone else, and Lucas questions what her motive would be for murder. Vince reveals that she wasn't going to graduate, and the others all decide that she decided to kill out of a need for vengeance.

Lucas keeps insisting that she couldn't be the killer, and Vince continues to goad her with the gruesome details about the murder of her sister(which supposedly warped her into killing, I guess). Gabe puts an end to it by having her brought to a secure room for an interrogation, as the rest look for the next trap. Seriously, Sara can't be the killer. The killer is supposed to be some kind of genius, and I can barely picture Sara chewing her own food without assistance of some kind.

Gabe asks Sara about the next trap, but she keeps insisting that she doesn't know anything. THAT I believe! Nicole rushes at her and delivers a nice, melodramatic slap across the face, and Sara accuses her of being the killer.

Nicole grabs a gun, and announces that she's going somewhere to get away from the group. After she makes her kooky exit, Gabe tries to question Sara again. He points out that that the FBI does rigorous screenings to weed out potential nutcases from training, then wonders if her specialized skill is fooling everyone into thinking that she's sane.

Sara suddenly has a flash of inspiration, based on what Gabe said. She realizes that each team member has a specific personality trait, and that each victim died as a resulkt of that trait. JD, for instance, was always the leader-type, and was killed simply because he was in front of the others at the first staged crime scene. Bobby's death came about because he always had to tinker with and fix things. Rafe supposedly died because of his weakness for coffee(although since they all got knocked out in that scene, the logic is a little iffy.), and so on.

As you might expect, this scene ends abruptly, just as we're finally learning something about the killer. We see Nicole next, getting frustrated at a vending machine. She sees a pack of cigarettes that apparently fell out of a vending machine, and decides to grab them.

Sara and the others all list their various strengths and weaknesses, and Sara suddenly realizes how Nicole is about to be killed. We see Nicole light up a cigarette. She takes a puff or two on it, then it burns up rapidly, causing her to gasp in pain and drop the cigarette on the ground.

As Nicole stares down at the cigarette, she also sees that the burn caused her hand to bleed. When she puts her finger to her lips, she sees that they are also bleeding. The others find her, but now her face is bleeding, and smoke is coming out through her neck as the corrosive substance in the cigarette burns through her lungs and flesh.

After witnessing Nicole's painful death, the last few survivors return to the lab. They all start to accuse each other of being the killer, then the intercom system kicks on. After some feedback, they all hear Harris asking, "Are you having fun?"

That sends the four of them into an uproar. The handcuffs are removed from Sara's wrists, and they devise a plan to split up, to try to find Harris before he finds them. Gabe, being a total dick, handcuffs Vince's wheelchair to a desk. Before she leaves the lab, Sara tells Vince to find a remote place to hide, and to not reveal it to her. Then she also leaves. Oh, and to cap it all off, Sara gave Vince an empty gun. Y'know, just for this scene, I hope he ends up as the only survivor.

Harris continues to tease them, but just keeps saying the same stuff over and over again. Then we see Vince crawling along the floor, until he reaches the freezer where the previous victims are being stored. He manages to get it open, and crawls in to hide at the far end of the tiny enclosed space.

He finds Rafe's body, and takes his gun. Instead of just using the other man's gun though, Vince removes the ammo clip and pops it into his own gun. Geez, talk about doing things the hard way! Just use another guy's gun....it's not like he needs it back! Plus all that stupid fiddling with the guns gave the door time to swing shut, effectively trapping Vince in the freezer.

Gabe, Sara and Lucas all apparently decided to stay together, which makes them even bigger a-holes for leaving Vince behind. I hope the stray cats eat 'em all. They walk into the diner where The Puppeteer's first victim was found, and Harris seems to be getting louder. They somehow discover a large trapdoor in the floor, and it seems that the voice is coming from the room within.

They find Harris, and he's waaaay past dead. He's been hung up just like the first "puppet", and he was apparently recorded by the killer before he died. That explains all of the repetition, as the recording must be on a loop.

As they approach the body, they see a videotape playing the last words of Agent Harris. Right behind him, you can clearly see Lucas watching him. D'oh! I think we just cracked the case, Columbo!

Another dumb novelty song starts up, and Harris begins to "dance", as the wires holding him up pull on his limbs. They shoot the player to shut down the music, then Gabe and Lucas aim their guns at one another. As they try to psyche each other out with about a hundred cop movie cliches, the lights go out.

All three of them rush outside, then have the silliest shootout in movie history. The blow away mannequins, street signs, car windows....you name it, these 3 shot at it, thinking it was a person. Apparently, gun owners don't need to have a high IQ to carry firearms.

Lucas shouts a warning to Sara, and Gabe implies that what he said made no sense. After several more inanimate objects are needlessy slaughtered, Sara screams at the 2 men to stop shooting. They do, but when Lucas steps out of hiding, Gabe fires a round into his chest.

Gabe walks past Sara's hiding place(under a car), and stands over Lucas, who is struggling to breath. Gabe says something like, "That's the price you pay for being fearless," then watches Lucas take a final gasp.

Gabe then remembers Sara. He turns around, calls her name in a creepy singsong voice, and begins to hunt her down. He sees a bus nearby, and enters it to search through the mannequins. He spots her jacket, but she placed it over a dummy to create a diversion, while she took off back toward the lab building.

Speaking of that building, Vince is still in the freezer. He has managed to push Rafe off of the metal table he was resting on, and Vince has hoisted himself up on that same table. Using the butt of his gun, he manages to hit the lever for the freezer door, and it swings open again. Yay for the smart guy everyone abandoned!

He crawls through the hallway, stopping every so often to listen for signs that the killer might be around. Then Vince makes his way to the elevator, which apparently works even in a power outage. He drags himself into the elevator, then goes down to the basement level. Nope, nothing there.

He then crawls back into the elevator, but the door remains open. As Vince waits for it to close, he hears someone approaching, then sees their shadow looming on the wall. As the elevator door starts to slide shut, Vince fires his gun. The gun jams, and the chamber mechanism flies backwards, going through his face. Farewell, Vince.

Sara finds Vince, and then Gabe scares the ever-loving crap out of her(and me)! They once again try to out-psyche each other. When that proves to be pointless, Gabe just lifts her and throws her through some glass. He then starts whaling on her, until Lucas leaps out of the dark to whack him with a cane or stick. Turns out he was wearing a kevlar vest.

They crash through every door and window imaginable, before Gabe finally gets the stuffing knocked out of him. Lucas limps his way back to Sara, who immediately begins to treat his various wounds.

As she applies first aid, Sara tells Lucas that she tricked the killer. she went through the building and moved all of the clocks back by 15 minutes, just to see if he would notice and change them back. Lucas asks her how they can ever prove that it was Gabe, and she reveals that she covered the clocks in the same luminescent substance the killer used to leave them the letters earlier.

She lifts one of Gabe's hand, and runs the UV light over it, but there's no glow. Nothing on the other hand either. Puzzled, Sara backs away from the unconscious man, and sees one of Lucas' hands glowing.

He tells her that the story about his parents was true, but that he killed them. When he got away with it, he decided to continue killing, making the deaths more and more elaborate. When he made the choice to join the FBI, he saw an opportunity to study his classmates, learn their weaknesses, then kill them with their weaknesses as the catalyst.

Sara tumbles down some stairs to escape, and there's a brief chase. Lucas catches her, of course, then throws her into the pool that was used by the Navy. They fire guns at each other underwater, and the chase resumes. As they both swim back to the surface, Lucas gets the idea to hold his gun out of the water, and wait for Sara to come up for air. She does the same, and they wait. Apparently the guns are waterproof now.

Lucas resurfaces first, and fires a shot at where Sara should be. But she stayed underwater, and while Lucas's bullet misses, she gets a hit on him.. The both scurry to exit the pool, only to have yet another face-off, which would make another good drinking game for this movie: Drink whenever they have a montage. Drink whenever someone draws a gun on someone else. Drink whenever the movie attempts to have a sense of humor. We'd all be dead, or in comas.

Anyway, Lucas tells Sara that he worked meticulously to pin the murders on her. Blood and hair samples, using her gun to match ballistics, her fingerprints left at very crime scene. Then they see a watch get thrown in their vicinity.

It;s Gabe! Somehow he survived, and decided to rescue Sara instead of murdering her. He fires a bullet into Lucas's forehead, and they watch the killer die. Then they get rescued, and Sara hopes that she'll someday still get to be a profiler. THE END

Wow, I haven't seen so many good actors in such a bad film together since, I don't know, the Nightmare On Elm Street remake? The Prom Night remake? What a waste of a potentially interesting idea. Horrible. 1 killer tree, just for at least having a few good actors in it.

And what did Mind Hunters teach me?

-Well, if you have a dominant personality quirk, expect a serial killer to come after you.

-Best place to conceal a weapon? Your ass.

-Cats love to swim.

My next film is a slasher called Uncle Sam, about a disgruntled soldier zombie. It sounds like a John McCain biography. See you!

Dr. Giggles

This time, we have a classic from the early 1990's, Dr. Giggles. It's a pretty vicious movie, and I was always amazed that they never did a sequel or follow-up of any kind. Anyway, get ready for SPOILERS, and let's watch this one together...

The movie begins with a pretty nifty credit sequence following various blood cells through a body. It's similar to the same opening credits for Jason X....anyone out there know if any other slasher films do something like this in the opening?

Anyway, there's a muffled voice speaking as we travel through someones bloodstream, and then an incision reveals Dr. Giggles looking into a man's open chest. He's describing what he's doing as he performs his "surgery", and the patient is revealed to be a corpse in a suit, who was apparently killed so that Dr. Giggles could "perform" surgery. Pretty demented, right off the bat. He goes on to point out that the patient just died from a heart attack.

Some real doctors show up, revealing that Dr. Giggles is a genius, but also a maniac. By the time they find the body he cut open, Dr. Giggles has already moved on. He has, in fact, moved to the lobby, where he sneaks up behind a pretty nurse/receptionist to rub her shoulders. She thinks that he's the dead man, Dr. Phillips, until she turns and sees that Dr. Giggles was using the severed arms of the doctor to massage her. She screams, he giggles, and the whole thing goes out over the PA system.

The real doctors prepare to leave the surgical area, but they hear more giggling. It turns out that Dr. Giggles released all of the patients, and several are watching from the observation deck above the surgery. As the staff reacts in horror, the loony patients laugh even louder at them.

Then Dr. Giggles turns on the microphone for the intercom system. He announces in a soft voice that "laughter is the best medicine". then we see a doctor leaving the facility. He takes out his employee card to swipe it at the electronic security gate, but Dr. Giggles grabs his arm from outside of the car. He then swipes the card with a bloodstained glove on his hand, and there's no sign of the doctor he stole the card and the car from.

A map shows him heading to a town called Moorehigh. Then we see the town itself, which looks like something out a film from 1950. Teens are swarming out of the local high school, including 2 of our main characters, Jennifer Campbell and Max Anderson. She's played by the rather fetching Holly Marie Combs(best known as one of the sisters on Charmed), and he's portrayed by the late Glenn Quinn, who we watched in that RSVP movie a while back.

They kiss, and Max tells Jen that she landed a job for the summer at the local paper. When they lock lips again, their friends show up to discuss a summer party they're all going to attend. There's another familiar face in the cast now....Doug E. Doug, a pretty funny actor who has been in numerous sitcoms and films. He was the only thing I enjoyed in Billy Cosby's last sitcom, the guy just makes me laugh.

As they leave school grounds, Max swoops in for a kiss, but Jen gives him an abrupt brush-off, leaving him looking hurt and confused. Then Jen goes to an appointment with her doctor. Jen apparently has a heart condition, but the doctor tells her not to worry too much about it.

Then we see a decrepit old house, washed out and grey. Inside, Dr. Giggles breaks down a wall with either a lug wrench or a crowbar, revealing that the wall was built to hide a doctor's office. Strange....

Jen walks home, and glances up at the old house Dr. Giggles is in. She walks a little bit faster, then hears Dr. Giggles hammering away at the walls inside the house. The distraction nearly makes her collide with her nasty neighbor Mrs. Henderson, and her small dog, Cheap Jump-Scare.

Mrs. Henderson starts to get nosy, asking Jen about the little heart monitor she has looped into her jeans, asking if it's a radio. Jen decides to be vague, and continues to walk home. Mrs. Henderson makes face, and I swear that she looks like one of the guys from The Kids In The Hall, playing one of their drag characters. Yeesh. She's the gorilla my dreams, I know that much!

Finally arriving at her house, Jen tells her father about her appointment, and her dad tries to assure her that her eventual heart surgery will work out fine. We also learn that her mother died, and she hates her stepmother. Gee, that's original. If I had to drink a beer while watching every movie made to see if anyone LIKES their stepmother, I'd be sober as Hell.

Back at Casa de Giggles, our maniac enters the now-revealed office. It was his father's office, a Dr. Evan Rendell. Okay, wait, I'm pausing the movie for a sec...So Dr. Giggles is the son of a doctor Rendell, right? And the shrinks at the facility where he was staying knew about the father....sooooo, why don't they know Dr. Giggles by his real name at the beginning? I mean, sure, maybe for some reason his first name was some kind of mystery, but just call him Mr. Rendell or something. I hate mistakes like that in movies, it's just sloppy writing that would have taken 2 minutes to rewrite.

Rendell finds a picture of his father in a lab coat and carrying a medical bag. That takes us to a flashback, showing the elder Rendell coming home from work one day. He kisses his wife, who whispers to him that their son is in the den.

In the den, Dr. Giggles(Boy Giggles?) has set up a make-believe doctor's office, complete with a crudely made plaque bearing his name and a teddy bear being cut open. As bizarre as this movie is, it's also a frickin' riot-and-a-half. When the boy sees his father standing in the doorway, he rushes over to him and announces that he wants to grow up to be a doctor too. Then, as they leave the den, the camera pans around the room, revealing that the kid has cut open at least 10-15 other stuffed animals, and then sewn them up again. This kid should have been cast as Pugsley in those Addams Family movies.

As the flashback ends, Rendell wipes tears out of his eyes, and promises to get revenge on the townspeople for what they did to the elder Rendell. I hope they eventually tells us what that was.

The happy teens pull up at the Rendell house, planning to have their party inside. Boy, that sounds like a great idea! The party consists of the Doug E. Doug character, Trotter; a drunk party animal named Stu; Leigh, Trotters's girlfriend, and Dianne, Stu's girlfriend. No sign of Jen or Max yet, which seems kind of weird.

So then Trotter starts to tell the story of Dr. Giggles. His dad, who we already saw was a local physician, apparently used a lot of unorthodox and deadly treatments on his patients. After numerous deaths, the town formed a lynch mob, Freddy Krueger-style, and stoned the doctor to death outside his home. The story ends with Trotter claiming that no one ever found his son, which again seems like bad writing. I mean, SOMEONE must have been able to connect the dots between a maniacal doctor's missing son, and the new asylum patient with a violent streak and delusions of being a doctor, right? And again, how do a bunch of local kids know that Dr. Giggles is actually named Evan, if the doctors at the mental hospital couldn't figure it out?

Anyway, Stu begins rapping on the walls, telling the others that Rendell had secret rooms and passages built throughout the house. As he gets Trotter and Leigh to help him find the hollow wall, both Stu and Dianne sneak out to the jeep, after locking the other couple inside the old house. Nice, they just left their friends to die. Jerks.

Trotter injures his shoulder trying to break down the door, and Leigh accuses him of pulling some kind of prank on her. Shen then suggests that if he can get them out, she might have sex with him later. Yeah, right. Get it in writing, Trotter.

When we next see Dr. Giggles, he has on a suit and a lab coat, To complete the look, Giggles also finds his father's pocketwatch and medical bag.He admires himself in the mirror, then promises to make the townsfolk of Moorehigh pay for killing dear ol' dad.

In the dark, Trotter and Leigh hear Dr. Giggles moving from room to room, but assume that Stu must have returned. They call out Stu's name, but when the doctor lets out his trademark giggle, they realize that he isn't Stu. Duh.

They see someone standing right outside the door, so Trotter walks up to the door, and looks through a small opening in it. Trotter then screams, and puts his hands over his eyes, When Leigh rushes over to help him, he shows her that he's fine...it was just a dumb prank.

Well, Leigh didn't find it funny, and neither did Dr. Giggles. The killer pushes a long needle through the keyhole, and injects Trotter with some kind of poison. As Leigh accuses him of playing another prank, Trotter coughs up blood and keels over.

The Doctor then enters the room, and draws another syringe of the stuff he injected into Trotter. The sound of Leigh screaming draws the attention of Mrs. Henderson and her attack poodle. She decides to take the dog for a walk, and marches right up to Rendell's front door. You go, man-girl!

She tries yelling at the front door, which achieves nothing, then attempts to look through a boarded-up window to no avail. As Mrs. Henderson turns to leave, she hears someone in the house giggling. I can't imagine who it might be.

She turns back to the house, and freaks out when she sees someone staring at her through a small peephole in the door. She runs away, dragging the dog with her. Dr. Giggles watches her leave, and does nothing but say, "Hmmm...)

The next scene shows us a carnival in full swing. The camera backs up, revealing that the carnival is a ways off, and that a group of teens are parked in what I assume is probably a popular spot for making out. This is where Max and Jen have been all night, swapping spit. As Jen scolds Max about drinking, the local cops arrive to break up the party. Officers MacGruder and Reitz watch and laugh as all of the cars peel away in 90 different directions.

As the cops head out on patrol again, they get a call about a disturbance at Mrs. Henderson's house. MacGruder tells Reitz that most of the 911 calls they get come from her. For her part, Mrs.(Why the "Mrs."? She clearly lives alone....unless she married her dog.)Henderson is in her bathroom, preparing to go to bed. she gets a sleeping pill and a glass of water ready, but hears that damned dog barking again, and decides to check out the commotion first.

After letting the dog into the house, Mrs. Henderson returns to her pill in the bathroom. She doesn't notice it, but the pill changed from a red one to a green one. You would think she'd notice something like that.

She swallows the pill, and jumps into bed, where her throat closes up. As Mrs. Henderson is gasping for air, she falls to the floor and calls 911. She meets Dr. Giggles, who sticks a tongue depressor into her mouth, then shoves a long probe up her nose and into her brain. It pretty much kills her in an instant.

MacGruder and Reitz pull up to the Henderson house, and cautiously walk through the front door. MacGruder tells Reiz the rest of the story about the Rendell family. It seems that the elder Dr. Rendell had a wife with a heart condition. His murder victims were all young women, in the hope of discovering a way to replace his wife's ticker with a healthier one.

The two cops split up, and Reitz fails to hear or see a door just behind him opening up. An old ironing board comes crashing out, giving both men a serious fright. when MacGruder comes running back to the other man's position, they briefly discuss the whereabouts of Evan Rendell Jr., AKA Dr. Giggles, but MacGruder doesn't want to have any in-depth discussion about him.

They approach a staircase, and Reitz claims that he can detect the scent of alcohol. On their way outside, Reitz finds a torn piece of fabric that he thinks is interesting, but MacGruder wants to leave, because he needs to take a whizz.

Back at the carnival, Max convinces Jen to ride the Ferris wheel with him. As they ride, she finally tells him about her heart condition. After Max tells her that he loves her, Jen reveals something else: her mother died in a hospital. Ever since, Jen has had a phobia about hospitals.

After the ride ends, she tells Max that she needs some time by herself. She walks home in the dark, and finds her dad and stepmom screwing like rabbits upstairs. Frustrated, she removes her little cardiac monitor and flings it into a nearby fish tank.

Dr. Giggles approaches her house, but Stu noisily arrives a few houses away, so the killer decides to take him out first. Stu and Dianne sneak past his younger brother, who is in a stupor playing Dr. Mario. A nuke wouldn't distract him.

In his bedroom, Stu hands his girlfriend a slinky negligee. she returns the favor by giving him a condom. As they each start to undress in different rooms, Dr. Giggles walks through the front door, right past Kid Nintendo. Then we get the all-important "dressing up for sex" montage.

Stu drops the condom in the toilet while trying to put it on, and uses someone's toothbrush to fish it out. As he's doing that, Dianne decides to check herself out in a bedroom mirror. She loudly announces that she's ready, but Stu is still busy trying to get the condom. I feel sorry for whoever uses that toothbrush.

Dianne starts to feel cold, so she leaves the bedroom to check the thermostat. As she adjusts it, Dr. Giggles attacks her. He pushes Dianne against the wall, and rams a thermometer down her throat, then calmly wipes his face when her blood sprays on him.

Stu finally gets the condom back, but throws it away after seeing how soggy it is. He then returns the toothbrush to the holder it was in, puts his cap on backwards, and heads back to the bedroom.

The light are out, so Stu climbs right into the bed. Under the blankets, he comes face to face with Dr. Giggles. The killer brings out a scalpel, and Stu screams loud enough to make even his zombie brother take notice. Then we see Stu's corpse in bed, with a spreading red stain on the sheet covering his crotch. As Dr. Giggles passes the kid playing video games again, he pronounces him, "Terminal", then leaves.

Jen is sitting in her living room, looking at old photo albums. She sees pictures of her parents in happier times, then sees a photo of her prom night with Max, and realizes that she shouldn't keep pushing him away. She grabs her jacket and decides to head back to the carnival to speak with him. The second she exits the house, Dr. Giggles enters through another door. Doesn't anyone in this town believe in locking doors?

Jen's father hears the second door, and assumes it to be his daughter coming home. After his new wife makes some catty remarks, he decides to go check on his daughter. He doesn't find her in her room, but he does find the monitor in the fish tank.

Worried that Jen might be in trouble, her dad starts to get dressed. The new wife makes several bitchy comments about Jen, but that only strengthens his resolve to find her. The evil stepmother stomps into the kitchen to eat something fattening.

At the carnival, Max meets up with a couple of girls who are trying to drive a wedge between him and Jen. they mention a party, and Max decides to go with them to check it out. I'll bet nothing goes wrong.

Jen's stepmom takes her bowl of mystery goop to the bedroom, and begins to smear it all over her vanity mirror. Then she sees the medical bag on her bed, and Dr. Giggles grabs her. He gags the surprised woman, then gets his hand on a tube among his medical equipment. it turns out to be a liposuction hose. He removes her gag, then shoves the hose down her throat. After he removes fat from her body, he cranks the suction, and the tube starts filling with blood.

At the "secret" party, Max is showing one of the girls from the carnival how to play a saxophone. After he explains how it all works, he suggests that she give it a try. She apparently has never seen a musical instrument before, because she gives it a blowjob instead. When she does manage to play a note, it sounds like a rooster in a blender. On the plus side, I suddenly want to be a saxophone.

Stupidity must be sexy, because soon Max finds himself kissing this chick. The other girl who was with them glares at the two, then leaves. It's reassuring to know that at least one person in this movie has standards.

Dr. Giggles goes looking around the house, and discovers the waterlogged heart monitor. That leads to a flashback to his childhood, to the day his mother died of heart failure. His dad sat at her deathbed sobbing, then covered his face and began giggling. As his laughter sounds more and more unstable, the young boy joins in. The flashback ends, and Dr. Giggles vows to save Jen's life. So wait, now he's the hero?

Jen wanders around the carnival, until running into the girl who left the party. Seeing her chance to screw her friend over, the girl offers to show Jen where Max is. Jen interrupts the makeout session, and tells him off, before going back to the carnival.

Dr. Giggles is also at the carnival. He examines a picture of Jen, then scans the immediate crowd. Jen appears and looks scared, but it turns out that she spotted her father in the crowd. She quickly runs into a funhouse to hide for a bit. And then Max shows up. anyone else want to pop up at the carnival? Cujo? Waldo? Bigfoot? Yup, one more person showed up, the girl who lured Max to the party. Oh, and I remember her name now: Coreen.

Jen finds herself in a mirror maze. Max calls her name, but she won't respond at first. Coreen sees Max and tries to get his attention, but she crashes into a glass wall, possibly breaking her nose. Dr. Giggles shows up at her side and giggles.

Jen hears Coreen gasp, and tries to locate Max. She finds a door with an arrow on it, and enters a new chamber. The door, which has a revolving mechanism, revolves to a closed position again. As Jen walks away, the door swivels again, revealing the other girl attached to the door with some type of yellow adhesive.

Jen doesn't scream, but she does back away, unaware that the killer is behind her now. Dr. Giggles scares her, then tells her that the tape over Coreen's mouth is "ouchless". Jen is startled enough to stumble into one of the glass walls, and she crashes through it.

As Jen recovers, Dr. Giggles takes out a syringe with a needle the size of a schoolbus. Max comes to the rescue, but he and Jen have a glass wall between them. She runs to get away from the crazy doctor, but the emergency exit she finds won't open.

As Dr. Giggles gets closer, Jen finally manages to force open the exit. She takes off running, then stumbles toward some trees, and falls into a ditch. She seems unconscious at first, but gets up when the killer gets within a few feet of her position.

She finds herself close to the Henderson house, but of course we know that Mrs. Henderson is dead. Jen doesn't know that though, and she wastes valuable seconds knocking and trying to get in. As Dr. Giggles narrows the gap between them, Jen runs into the street, where a police vehicle nearly demolishes her.

At the police HQ, both Max and Jen explain that a maniac dressed as a doctor is after Jen. Nobody believes him except for Reitz, who proposes that the killer is the presumed-dead son of Dr. Rendell. None of the others cops buy his theory, and he gets demoted to desk duty for the time being.

Out in the hall, Reitz confronts MacGruder about not backing him up. Max hears their conversation, and takes in all the details. The 2 cops move the chat to the locker room, where MacGruder pulls out a bottle of liquor and prepares to launch another flashback our way.

The flashback goes back 35 years, to the night after the elder Rendell was found to be a murderer. The angry vigilante group had already murdered Dr. Rendell, and MacGruder was posted in the morgue, to guard the bodies of all of the victims, Rendell included.

Anyway,in the middle of the night, the cop hears a noise coming from the morgue. He grabs a flashlight to check it out, and hears the sound again: giggling. And it's coming from one of the covered bodies.

He removes the sheet over Mrs. Rendell's corpse, and stares in horror when he sees the dead woman's stomach begin to wriggle and swell. A knife bursts through the corpse's torso, then a pair of bloody hands pop out. Rendell Junior sits up, covered in blood. MacGruder fainted, and the boy was gone when he woke up. The boy even cleaned up the blood, and sewed his mother's stomach together again. The old cop tells Reitz that he kept it to himself, because he knew that no one would believe him.

At Jen's house, the chief of police leaves an answering machine message, letting the family know that Jen is in his custody, and not to worry. He leaves his phone number and details in his message, and Dr. Giggles hears it all. Whoops....

Jen's father arrives home, and goes from room to room, trying to find either his wife or daughter. Or both, I guess. He hears the message on the answering machine, then dials the number the chief gave him. While it's ringing, he hears a message from Dr. Giggles, telling him that he's the new family physician, and that he's standing in the kitchen.

When Dad turns around, Dr. Giggles cuts him with a surgical saw, then makes a crack about sending the family his bill. As he prepares to finish off Jen's father, someone comes in through the front door. It's Macgruder, looking for the family. He calls out their names, and eventually discovers the body of Jen's dad in the kitchen.

Dr. Giggles also finds him though, and stabs him from behind. As Macgruder starts to fall over, he manages to shoot the killer before dying, hitting him under the ribs on the left side. Dr. Giggles wavers between crying and giggling, which is kind of awesome to watch. You gotta give this movie credit for one thing, it's pretty damn funny.

At the hospital, Jen's doctor is running a test. He tells her that it takes about 40 minutes, so the scene switches back to Max and Reitz. The cop turns on his computer to see if he can get any other info about Evan Rendell Jr. Max pulls up a chair to watch.

Dr. Giggles finds a quiet area, and decides to perform surgery on himself. He cuts open the wound, picks up something call a retractor, then uses a suction device to clean up the blood. The entire time he's laughing like a loon. He manages to remove the bullet, then sews himself back up again.

Reitz is still searching for information about the killer, then remembers the piece of cloth he found earlier. digging it out of his pocket, he sees a partial name on it, and connects the cloth to a local mental hospital. Then he finds an APB that was issued 2 weeks earlier, about the maniac killing 3 hospital workers. He rushes to follow up this new lead, and tells Max to stay behind. A second after the cop leaves, Max does likewise.

Posing as Jen's dad, Dr. Giggles calls the police station.He gets them to tell him where Jen is, then heads for the hospital. There, Jen is still having the test done. The machine starts to flatline, and Jen panics. The doctor comes in, and tells Jen that they need to operate immediately on her. Then he turns into Dr. Giggles and exposes her heart with a swift slash of his scalpel.

Dream sequence. Jen wakes up screaming and crying, and her doctor tells her that she was just having a nightmare. He checks the results of the test, and Dr. Giggles stabs him in the back. With the reflexes of a panther, Jen jumps off of the table.

Jen's real doctor crawls a short distance, then stabs Dr. Giggles in the leg. Then the 2 men have a wacky duel, using medical equipment instead of swords. Dr. Giggles wins the brief fight, then wraps a blood pressure cuff around the other man's neck. He pumps it up until the real doctor is dead, Jen hurries away while her doctor is being murdered, but Giggles catches the girl and injects her with a sedative.

Reitz enters Jen's home, and finds her dad still alive. He confirms that the attacker was a doctor. Then Reitz calls 911. Good idea.

In an empty operating room, the lunatic prepares Jen for surgery. While he's "examining" her, Reitz comes to the rescue. In record time, the cop manages to find the once-hidden office in the basement. He should be the hero in every slasher flick. Of course, then they'd only be 5 minutes long, but still...

Where was I? Oh yeah, so after Reitz finds the secret office, we see Dr. Giggles take the lid off of a metal pail, revealing it to be containing a fresh human heart. It's the size of a Buick. Seriously, it's like he harvested it from King Kong. Oh wait, it's more than 1, that's why.

Reitz finds a door marked WAITING ROOM, complete with a sign proclaiming "The doctor is in"...which reminds me of something. When this movie came to theatres, there were a couple of variations of the teaser posters. 2 that were the most memorable were "The Doctor Is In...sane!", and "The Doctor Is Out...Of His Mind!". Those always cracked me up.

Anyway, the waiting room is filled with corpses. They all have big, gaping wounds where their hearts were removed, and there's a pretty good sight gag, where Trotter's corpse is holding a magazine open. a joke about the amount of time spent in waiting rooms, I'm sure. Cute. This movie needed more sight gags. The condition of the bodies, as well as the odor, makes Reitz barf. Reitz crosses the room to another door, and finds himself in a mockup of a hospital corridor.

Dr. Giggles shows Jen some contraption his father built, and promises to let her be the first patient to try it out. She doesn't exactly look thrilled by the news. As Reitz continues to open doors as slowly as he possibly can, Dr. Giggles is telling Jen that he needs to stop her heart before he can replace it. Yikes! To add to Jen's terror, his machine begins to throw out a shower of sparks. This could get ugly...

True to his word, the mad doctor electrocutes Jen. Damn. The machine causes the lights to go out, but then they kick back on after a second. Reitz sees the light on in the O.R., and rushes in with his gun drawn. Dr. Giggles tosses one of the spare hearts at the cop, which makes him recoil with disgust. Giggles uses the distraction to short out the lights once again, and makes his escape before they come back on.

Reitz sees a door swiveling, and follows Dr. Giggles. When he finds no sign of the killer, he returns to Jen, and blocks the door the killer used with a heavy shelf. Then he resuscitates Jen while Dr. Giggles declares that he's going to "do what docrors do best", ehich leads to a view of some golf clubs. Hey, another funny gag! Why couldn't the whole movie have been filled with this stuff?

Anyway, Reitz gets Jen breathing again, then tells her that she needs to lie still while he goes to get help. The minute he leaves, Jen sits up and tries to go after him. She distracts the cop, and he nearly has a heart attack himself when Max pops up from out of nowhere.

The trio pass through the waiting room with all of the bodies, and Jen sees Dr. Giggles emerge from a hiding spot. He uses the golf club he selected to give Max a good whack, then takes a swing at Reitz. Fore! As the cop and the doc spar, Jen grabs the gun Reitz dropped, and starts to load bullets into it.

She fires a wild shot, and it hits the door. Dr. Giggles gets the pistol away from her, and she pushes him, making his shot go astray as well. Reitz uses the confusion to get up, then makes the maniac chase him.

Jen goes to Max, and helps him to his feet. they start to climb to the first floor of the house, but the old stairs collapse. Meanwhile, the doctor searches for the cop, and finds him hiding behind a table filled with various bottled chemicals. Dr. Giggles fires a shot that manages to spill some of the bottles on Reitz, then sparks a fire that engulfs the unlucky cop.

Dr. Giggles attacks him, and pushes Reitz up against a stretcher. That seemed to be a good idea, because it put out the fire on the officer's back. Let's hear it for bad aim! Hurray!

As Jen and Max decide to see if they can climb the loose wood from the stairs, Dr. Giggles and Reitz strangle each other. Giggles takes out his little saw and plunges it into the other man's back, until blood starts flowing out of the cop's mouth.

Max has managed to get to the ground floor of the house, and he helps Jen by pulling her up. In typical slasher fashion, Dr. Giggles grabs Jen's feet to try to drag her back down. She manages to kick his hands away, and Max gets her the rest of the way up.

Dr. Giggles runs through his underground lair(which is now an inferno), giggling all the way. there's a not-too-subtle view of some oxygen tanks nearby, and the young couple upstairs escape the house just seconds before it blows up.

Jen is rushed back to the hospital, where she now needs the heart surgery because of all the strain she put on her ticker that night. As she gets prepped for surgery, an ominous-looking stream of blood is seen flowing underneath a nearby door. A nurse sees the blood and decides to investigate, leading her to a dead doctor in the hallway. Dr. Giggles grabs her, presumably to steal her scrubs.

Sure enough, he slowly limps into the operating room. When the surgeon asks who he is, Giggles removes his surgical mask, revealing that his face is covered in blisters and scorch marks. He opens his charred bag, revealing several surgical implements that look like medieval torture devices. He then kills the surgeon with one that shoves several prongs into the man's face.

Jen rips away her oxygen mask, and stumbles out of the room. Didn't we do this already? Did I accidentally rewind the movie to the previous sequence? I guess not. Jen hides in an eqipment room, the sees some heart paddles and gets an idea. She backs away from the door, allowing the killer to enter the room and approach her. She then throws several bottles of alcohol at him, and uses the heart paddles to electrocute Dr. Giggles.

Jen walks away from him like she doesn't have a care in the world, which is how you know he's not dead. I swear, they do this in every damn slasher movie. Whatever happened to rushing to a safe place? It's not exactly shocking when he grabs her ankle.

He somehow manages to stand up, and tells her that he doesn't feel well. She replies by telling him to take 2 and call her in the morning--the "2" being a pair of trident-like blades. In yet another funny bit, Dr. Giggles looks into the camera and gasps, "Is there...a doctor in the house?" Then he keels over. Awesome.

In the next scene, Jen is back in a hospital bed, looking a lot like Neve Campbell in the first Scream. I think I just might have a teensy-weensy crush on Holly Marie Combs now. Her dad is at her bedside, also a patient in the hospital. He makes sure that she's okay, then lets Max have some time alone with her. Hands off, Max! She's mine bubba.

Max sits next to her, and they share a kiss. He makes a crack about how it's a heck of a way to spend the summer,then they kiss again. The heart monitor blips a few times. THE END

Well, in spite of a few lapses in logic, this was very entertaining. There was a ridiculously high body count(17, according to the IMDB website), a good group of actors, impressive gore, and some funny material towards the end. All in all, I'm giving it 4 killer trees out of 5. Now get going on a sequel or two. Or 12.

and what did I learn from Dr. Giggles?

-Contrary to popular opinion, laughter is not the best medicine. Laughter kills, man. Laughter kills.*cue up the NBC "The More You Know" logo*

-Liposuction should never be administered orally. Yuck! Same goes for rectal thermometers.

-Nintendo games are a dangerous threat to suburban families. Beware!

Next up is either Mind Hunters or Uncle Sam. This should be a fun week. See you soon!

Whisper

Hey hey! This time out, I'm watching a movie called Whisper. It's what Home Alone would have looked like if Rob Zombie ruined...uh, I mean, "remade" it, like he did with Halloween. As always, I'm giving SPOILERS up the wazoo, so I hope your wazoos are empty!

So, my reference to Home Alone was actually pretty dead-on. The basic plot is that a team of criminals kidnap a young boy from a wealthy family, and he outwits and kills them, one by one. The only things missing are Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern. The stars are mostly from television, which kind of has me wondering if this started out as a made-for-cable movie or something.

Anyway, it starts out in a forest. A woman is being chased by a wolf or dog of some kind, and he's gaining on her. She gets a brief bit of hope when she sees that there's a construction crew and a road a few feet away, but her optimism vanishes when she sees that there are actually 3 to 4 wolves after her.

Terrified, she wanders out onto the road, where a car narrowly misses splattering her entrails all over the road. Unfortunately, she fails to see the car going the OTHER way, and it does turn her into a road pizza. Nice irony. As the road crew and drivers all try to help her, the main wolf that was chasing her darts back into the woods.

In the next scene we meet David, the main character. He's in his bedroom playing with toy cars, smiling as he makes them crash into each other. Nice kid. His mother calls him to come downstairs, and he tells her that he'll be right there.

We then meet 2 more main characters: Max, a recently paroled ex-con, and his girlfriend Roxanne. Max is played by Josh Holloway(Sawyer on Lost), and Roxanne is played by Sarah Wayne Callie( who is on The Walking Dead). They are interested in starting up a small restaurant together, but Max being recently out of prison makes their dream seem like a bad investment to every bank they meet with.

Anyway, back to little David. His mother can't spend the day with him, but he will be surrounded by his friends at his birthday party, and someone named Chloe....so, yay. It turns out that Max and Roxanne have agreed to help their acquaintance Sid out with a scheme to abduct David from his own party. Oh, and Max is dressed as Santa Claus. This is a very subtle plan here.

So Max distracts the children by dumping out a sack of toys all over the floor, while David quietly decides to duck out the back door. In the snow, David is hovering over a dead bird on the ground. He places a napkin over the bird and tries to bring it back from the dead, but Max interrupts him.

As the other children are killed into another room for cake and ice cream, David's mother comes looking for him. She wanders outside, where she finds both the dead bird and a ransom note.

While Max is driving away from the scene of the crime, the rest of the team are waiting for him at a remote location. In addition to Roxanne and Sid, there's also a sarcastic drunk named Vince involved with this whole kidnapping scheme. There's some friction between Vince and Roxanne, so Sid attempts to distract Vince with a card game. Unfortunately, the game is cut short, because one of them forgot to remove the Jokers from the deck. Oh no, now they can't POSSIBLY play cards! Very dramatic.

Max shows up, and they transfer David from the van to the other vehicle. A tow truck pulls up, thinking that one or both vehicles might need some assistance, but they all tell him that everything is fine. He drives away, but seems to be pretty leery of the group. Foreshadowing? Wait, it just got weirder....after the trucker leaves, he has a vision(somehow caused by David, even though he's still in the trunk) in which a couple of murders take place with an axe.

After the weird scene with the axe goes by, the abductors drive both vehicles to an even more desolate area, and set the van on fire, along with the Santa suit and anything else they think might be used to trace them.

Back at the mansion, the lead detective on the case is none other than Skanky from the old series Forever Knight. There was a Universal Pictures logo at the top of the movie, but I swear this had to be made for television. Probably Canadian television, judging by the cast so far. And the look of the budget.

Anyway, the other cop is played by Dule Hill, yet another television actor. Sheesh, I feel like I should be taking a commercial break here. Hey Mom, ever get that not so fresh feeling? No? Okay, then back to the film.

The kidnappers cross over into Maine, ayuh. They get to a houswe that seems pretty far off the beaten path, and set up to be there for awhile, as they put the next stage of their plan into place. Max gets David out of the trunk, then blindfolds him. Max is wearing a ski mask to hide most of his face from David, so I'm not real clear on why the blindfold is needed.

Max hears something in the woods, and actually takes off his mask to face it....because this movie was written by brain-damaged hamsters, would be my best guess. If there was someone in the woods, they just got a great look at Max. As he gently lifts David out of the trunk, a black dog or wolf surprises him. He freaks out, but the dog goes away as quickly as it arrived. Nice doggy.

After that, everyone settles in. It turns out that the hideout they're in is the site of a summer camp that's closed until the end of winter. Nice. The interior of the building they're staying in makes the house on Haunted Hill look like a luxury resort. It's all dust, cobwebs, and warped, creaky wood.

Being close to Canada, they discover that the television mostly gets channels in French. Roxanne brings David to one of the bedrooms, locks him in, then tells him that he can remove the blindfold. He waits, however, choosing to feel his way around the walls first. Weird kid.

Anyway, the other kidnappers make fun of Roxanne and Max, because they're being so nice to the kid. Vince even calls Roxanne a den mother. Then David removes the blindfold and sees that they've given him some paper and about a thousand crayons to draw with. Oh, and while Roxanne puts away some groceries and supplies, Sid warns her not to get attached to David.

David is seen sitting in the dark, listening to the tv in the next room. Later, Roxanne puts a ski mask on, and goes into the locked room to tuck David in for the night. When he asks her why she and the others wear the masks around him, she explains that she doesn't want him to be able to identify her. David promises not to look if she takes it off, and Roxanne suddenly hears indistinct voices in nthe room. When the voices stop, Roxanne agrees to remove nthe mask, but only if David keeps it a secret.

She removes the mask, and sings "Midnight at the Oasis" to help David fall asleep. Through the ventilation duct, everyone can hear her singing. An ominous spark goes off in the furnace, but that's about it.

In bed, Max and Roxanne discuss their plans for their share of the ransom money. Aside from the restaurant, Roxanne has a scar on her temple that Max suggests could be removed through surgery. She doesn't seem to like the idea.

Then they btalk about how a guy named Jones is going to get the ransom money, and David could be home the following night. David hear the details, and sits up in bed. Somewhere, a disgruntled guy running a slasher movie blog yawns.

After everyone has gone to sleep, another black wolf shows up outside the house. At the same time, Roxanne hears David's voice, commanding her to kill Max. She looks around the dark bedroom, and David lunges at her, covering her mouth with his hand.

Awwww, it was a dream sequence. What a rip-off. When she wakes up with a loud gasp, Roxanne manages to wake up Max as well. She tells him that she had a bad dream, then asks Max to see if David's okay. Being totally p-whipped, Max does as she asks.

In David's room, the bed is empty and one of the windows is wide open. As Max closes it, David scares him by popping up behind him. He then calls Max by name, and says that he heard it earlier that day at some point. Max leaves quickly, and David just sits on the edge of the bed, staring at him as he goes.

The next morning starts with Vince freaking out. He claims that David smashed some bottles of insulin that he had stashed in the trunk, even though Max tries to convince him that it was just an accident. Then an arrangement is made to drive Vince back over the border to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and the agitated psycho is calm again--until he sees that David has somehow managed to escape from his room, and has seen all of their faces now. D'oh!

Sidney and Vince both threaten to kill David, while Roxanne and Max try to talk them down from committing murder. Max takes Vince to pick up some more insulin, while Roxanne takes a picture of David to send as proof that David is still alive. Vince convinces Max to get some lunch in Portsmouth, so they drive around for a little bit.

While Max looks for a place to get lunch, Sid puts on a ski mask and enters David's room. He finds a picture on the wall that David drew, showing all four of the kidnappers standing in a group, with their faces plain as day.

Sid asks David not to tell anyone what he and the others look like, or their names. To emphasize his point, he tells the boy about an incident during a bank robbery. When a teller pushed a silent alarm, his partner was forced to shoot her in the face. After the story, David shows him a picture of a necklace that he drew. The boy claims that it was the necklace that the teller was wearing the day that she died.

David then tells him that he knows all of the details of that day...including the nfact that it was Sid, not his partner who killed the teller. As Sid continues to stare at him, David also informs him that he's having a fatal heart attack. Sid leaves the room, but fails to lock the door.

As Sid staggers into the living room and falls over, Roxanne hears the commotion and comes running. Sid tries to call 911, but Roxanne kicks the phone away, reminding him that they can't afford to be traced in any way. She tries to tell him that Max and Vince will return in time to get him to a hospital, but it's too late to save him.

When Max and Vince finally arrive, Roxanne tells them that Sid died of a heart attack. She put the body in the basement, and Max tells Vince that they'll have to take the corpse with them, as the snowy ground is too hard to dig a grave in. Vince then sees spiders in the basement, and squishes one.

David goes back into his bedroom, where he plays with one of the spiders. Max, Roxanne and Vince try to come up with a new plan, and there are 2 possibilities: either Max goes to the rink where Sid was supposed to pick up the ransom money, or they just drop the kid off somewhere on a populated road, and drive away. Vince wants the money, Roxanne just wants to drop David off somewhere, and Max is wavering between both plans.

The scene ends before Max reveals what he thinks they ought to do. Vince and Max drive into town to call about the ransom dropoff, and Vince tries to give Max a pistol. Max shrugs him off, and leaves him in the car to make the phone call.

Max enters what turns out to be an indoor skating rink. He sees newspapers that feature David as their major story, then a payphone rings. Max answers it, and explains to the anonymous person on the other end that Sid died. The voice tells Max to get ready to call David's mother, and that there will be a meeting at a museum the next day. After working out the basic details, the caller hangs up.

The investigators hold a meeting to go over the evidence. It's not much...some tire tracks in the snow, the remnants of the van that was torched, and 2 fingerprints. That's all they have, though.

Back in his room, David has drawn more images on the walls, including pictures of playing cards. Max enters the room, and tells David thast they're going for a ride in the car. As they leave the room, a close look at the kidnappers that David drew reveals that Sid's image has peen colored black. Creepy.

During the ride in the car, they drive past a couple making out in another vehicle. David gives the male in the other car a flash of images that suggest that the sex could turn violent. Then David is pushed to the floor of the car, and they keep driving.

They find a location that appears to be a junkyard or automobile graveyard(tires are stacked up at different spots, as well as barrels, and other odds and ends), and they hook up the equipment needed to disguise their voices and scramble any tracers.

They call David's mother, and she asks for proof that he's alive. Unfortunately, when Max removes the voice distorter and holds the phone up to David's face, he refuses to utter a sound. After several seconds, Vince yells at David, and the ensuing argument makes them slip up and reveal each others' names. When he realizes what just happened, Max swiftly hangs up, and rips all of the high-tech devices from the phone.

Back in the mansion, the investigators reveal that they didn't buy enough time to trace the location of the call. David's mother asks a few times if they think the kidnappers killed her son yet, and her demeanor makes one of the detectives uneasy. Hmmm....

As the kidnappers pack up the gadgets, David mentions that he'd like to get some ice cream on the way home. This makes Vince lose his cool, and he lunges at the kid. As Roxanne moves to get between them, Max punches Vince, then shoves David into the trunk.

On the return trip, they see the same vehicle that they spotted before, but no sign of the couple. Then Max is forced to swerve the car to avoid hitting the guy from the car, because nhe's standing in the road, shirtless and with his hands covered in blood.

At the house, Roxanne wakes up hearing David whispering. She gets up to look around, and nearly has a heart attack when Vince pops up in front of her. He tries to come on to her, but she resists his cheesy lines.

Instead, Roxanne finds a lonely spot, and prays to be forgiven. A noise startles her, and Roxanne finds several wet footprints that lead her to the basement. There, she finds Sid's corpse, almost on top of her. Yikes!

The next day, Vince finds David sitting out in the living room area, setting up a chess game. When he asks David who let him out of his room, David tells him that no one did. Then the boy informs him that Max has gone somewhere to speak to a contact named Jones.

Vince tells David that he should be dead by now, especially after he botched the ransom demand. David replies that Vince can't kill him, and the n2 sit across from each other, just staring. Golly gee, I wonder who will die next?

They get interrupted by Roxanne, who call one of them "sweetie", and walks into another room. David suggests that she should be Vince's girlfriend, instead of being with Max. The he reveals that he heard her praying the other night.

When Max gets to town, there are cops everywhere. They found the body of the young woman whose boyfriend was compelled to murder her, and it's not exactly safe to meet with "Jones" under the circumstances. Frustrated by this unexpected turn of events, Max drives back to the house.

Vince frightens Roxanne in the kitchen, and she spills a drink. As she attempts to clean the mess, Vince gives her a hug, and tells Roxanne that it's all going to work out. As Roxanne tries to pull away, we discover that she and Vince had a fling while Max was in prison, but broke up.

Vince tells Roxanne that he wants to be with her, then mentions that he knows that she had an abortion, and that the baby was his. Roxanne tries to deny it, then demands to kinow how he found out about the baby, because she had never told anyone about it.

Vince asks Roxanne to sleep with him one more time, and he even takes her wedding ring. She does nothing to resist him. As David is blacking out another person on his wall, Vince kisses Roxanne, and the scene abruptly ends right there.

In the city, Max gets another call from the mysterious "Jones", who tells him that the call from yesterday was a disaster. Jones tells Max that they have no choice but to kill David now, but Max hates the idea. They argue for a bit, until Max spots a guy in the museum also on a cell ohone. He grabs him, but it isn't Jones. Jones agrees to one final meeting, at the restaurant that Max wants to buy.

They end the conversation, then Max walks up to a payphone, and hides the cell phone underneath it. As he watches from a hiding place, a grey-haired man approaxches the same phone, grabs the hidden one, then walks out of the museum. Max follows him, but a dog distracts himk in the parking lot, and the mystery man gets away.

At a construction site, Max catches up to him. Max yanks the guy around by his collar, but the man denies being Jones. When Max points out that he knew about the phone, the man says that he was paid to leave the phone for Max, then pick it up when the scheme was finished.

Max demands a description of Jones, then we see David rolling a crayon on his desk back and forth. At the same time, a screwdriver on a scaffolding above Max and the stranger also begins to roll, and it plants itself in the top of the phone guy's skull, killing him in an instant. David wins again, and it shows up as another mural on the wall.

Vince looks in on David, and his picture on the wall is partially blacked out now. Roxanne taakes a shower to get some time by herself, but hears nthe door creak open. She creeps over to the wall to have a peek, and sees a wolf in the doorway. When she turns back to hide, she sees the shadow of a second wolf prowling on her other side.

As the wolf near nthe entrance comes closer, Roxanne finds a wrench on the floor and grabs it. As she tries to work up the courage to confront the wild animals, Roxanne hears the door open again, then it gets very quiet. As Roxanne peeks in both directions, it looks like both creatures have left as mysteriously as they arrived. she puts the wrench back down, and stands up to leave, but Max comes out of nowgere, demanding to know what she did.

It was another dream sequence. Still sitting on the floor of the shower room, Roxanne finds herself still clutching the heavy wrench. She begins sobbing, and stays on the floor for a bit longer.

Still playing chess, Vince watches as David makes one of the playing pieces vanish. when Vince demands it back, David responds that he'll return it after telling Max about what Vince and Roxanne were doing in the kitchen. After he also tells vince that he has checkmate, the angry kidnapper sweeps nall of the pieces onto the floor with an angry roar. Then he grabs David, and tells him that they have a new game to play.

Roxanne puts on a robe, and finishes wiping her face dry, as David and Vince head outside. Vince marches David over to the trees, then attacks him with a fireplace poker. As he knocks David to the ground, they both hear something break. David reveals that he put the new insulin bottles in the pocket of the jacket he was wearing, and now they're all smashed again. D'oh!

Vince starts to strangle David, who uses his powers to try to get Vince to let him go. Vince lets him go long enough to re-check the bag of insulin bottles, and David disappears when Vince looks up from the bag again. From the distance David taunts Vince, telling him that he knew he was incapable of murder.

Roxanne hears Vince shouting David's name, so she runs outside. While Vince is trudging through the forest looking for the kid, a couple of wolf-like shapes can be seen running through the trees nearby. Vince hears them and walks toward the sound, then sees some movement, and follows it.

Roxane follows the two into the woods, just as Vince finds a clearing. There's an ice pond here, and David is standing at the center of the frozen water. Not being particularly bright, vince decides to walk out onto the ice to snatch the boy. Now I'm no psychic, but I have a feeling I know what's going to happen next. Heck, anyone who's seen the second Omen movie knows what's coming up...

So Vince starts walking toward David, and the ice begins to crack. I guess Vince saw that movie as well, because he decides to move back onto the snow to wait David out. As David starts to return to the snow, Vince tells him that he's going to break the kid's legs. Roxanne sees their tracks in the snow, and rushes to find them.

As Vince continues to threaten David, the young boy tells him to look around. Vince turns around just in time to see a black wolf running straight at him. Vince gets scared and runs back onto the ice, not bothering to move carefully to avoid breaking through the ice. When he looks behind him, he sees David back on land, with the wolf acting like a pet. David then says, "Checkmate."

As expected, Vince hears the ice cracking pretty loudly around him now, and plunges into the water like an anchor. He does what the kid in Omen II did, and tries to break through the ice with his hands and fists, but to no avail. David stands above him on the ice and waves. The little shit.

Roxanne arrives then, and David pretends to panic over Vince falling through the ice. Despite the black wolf growling at her, Roxanne stands her ground to "rescue" David, and they leave Vince to die beneath the ice.

A couple of faxes come in to the police station, and the fingerprints belong to Vince. Yeah, good luck arresting him now! Anyway, Detective Miles(the one played by Dule Hill) sees the fax, then decides to keep the information to himself. He gets a call tracing Vince to the pharmacy in Maine where he filled his insulin prescription. Miles takes off to see if he can get any good follow-up information that might help to locate David.

Someone is seen walking on the frozen pond, as Roxanne fixes David a bowlmof cereal. As he's eating, David suggests that not having Vince around must be a relief to Roxanne. She tells him not to talk like that, but he keeps insisting that Vince being out of the picture should make her happy.

The person walking across the pond turns out to be Max. For some unknown reason, he just decided to take a spotanrous walk to the frozen pond, and he even finds Vince under the ice. So now he's psychic? This movie makes less sense every minute that it drags on. Domn't get me wrong, I kinda like it....but scenes like this one seem kind of like padding more than anything.

Anyway, as Roxanne walks away, she misses seeing David's eyes turn black. David finishes his cereal, and Max returns. David begins to swat more spiders with a loud whack, and it drives Max crazy. When David goes back to his room, Max and Roxanne have a fight over what to do next. Max wants to make the rendezvous the next day, but Roxanne is terrified at the thought of being alone with David.

Miles arrives in Maine, and buys a local map. Based on a note he found, he locates the campground on the map. Gee, that was fast! If theyb had put Miles in charge of the case, the movie would've ended an hour ago!

Down in the basement, Roxanne decides to play Nancy Drew. She nearly collides into one of the corpses, which seems to be her shtick. When Max wakes up to go looking for her, David can also be seen awake. Roxanne finds Vince, and goes through his pockets to find her ring, but Max beat her to it. He sneaks up behind her, and demands to know why her ring was with Vince, instead of on her finger.

Roxanne confesses to the affair, but Max leaves her babbling in the basement. He gets the car keys, even after roxanne begs him not to leave her alone with David, and drives off to parts unknown. He hears david while he's driving, then the boy suddenly appears next to him in the car, causing Max to jump, and sending the car into a swerve.

When Max gets the vehicle under control again, David is no longer in the car with him. A the same time, Miles finds the house. As he draws his gun and makes an approach, a couple of the wolves appear, snarling at the detective, He hurries into the house, and finds Roxanne sitting in the living room. He cuffs her, then goes looking for David.

He finds the boy in his bedroom, still drawing on the walls. David tells Miles that each person's story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. And the wolves start growling again, right out the window.

Max gets to the latest meeting place, where he finds a newspaper article about the kidnapping. According to the article, everyone thinks that david has been killed already. Back at the house in the woods, David tells Miles that there's a phone in the basement. Miles heads down there, but the steps break. As he falls to the basement floor, Roxanne slams the door shut and locks Miles away.

Miles shoots at the door, and one bullet gets Roxanne in the arm. As he prepares to fire again, Roxanne beats him to the punch, blasting the detective off of his feet with a shotgun. She gets upset and runs into another room to cry, but David follows her. As he tries to tell her that she had no choice but to shoot the detective, David blows into his hand, then rests it against the scar on Roxanne's forehead. She feels a painful jolt hit her, but when she looks into a nmirrir, the scar is gone.

David gives her the handcuffs, and Roxanne asks David what he is. He tell.s her that he's an angel. Then he shows her what Hell is like, as portrayed on his mural. When he asks her if she's gioing to kill Max before he kills them, Roxanne protests that Max would never do that. Nevertheless, David tries to plant the idea in Roxanne's head that she can save Max from damnation by murdering him.

The next morning, Max wakes up in the diner. Someone taps on the window next to him, and Max sees a child grinning in at him. Then the phone rings, and Max finds himself speaking to Jones again. When Jones once again tells him to kill David, Max hangs up.

Then we get an unexpected plot twist: Jones is actually David's own mother. She intentionally botched the phone calls and ransom meetings, to try to force the kidnappers to kill her son. She also tells him that David isn't human, and that he torments everyone he meets. Oh, and David isn't really her son, she adopted him. She claims that David gets stronger as he grows up, and that he needsw to be stopped before more people die.

Max still refuses to kill David, who is currently getting his hair washed. Upset that her plan didn't work, David's mother takes out a gun and shoots herself in the head. Max tries to call Roxanne, but the number is out of service. He rushes to get back in the car and hurry home.

David and Roxanne wander the dark house together, and Roxanne builds a nice fire to keep the place warm. David puts his head on the ground, and claims that he can hear "a bad man coming". That must be Max, because he arrives, and takes a gun out of the glove compartment before heading inside.

At the front door, Max yells to Roxanne, to see if she's okay. She replies that she is, but wants Max to forgive her. When he says that he does and enters, Roxanne shoots him. she yells at David to run away, while Max limps away to try to come up with a new survival plan.

Max enters the house again, and David's voice in his head tells Max that Roxanne needs to be killed before she can hurt anyone else. In Roxanne's head, David whispers the opposite, that she needs to kill Max first. Then David shows up, along with his wolves, and the house begins to fall apart.

Max covers his ears in the chaos, and everything goes calm. When he puts his hands down again, the noise and violence return. Max figures out how to put a stop to David's influence, and runs after the boy. Max gets to a storage area, and the room goes quiet again. As he looks for David, Max sees colls and other objects in the room come to life around him.

While Max is searching the room for any sign of the kid, Roxanne enters, and also tries to lure David toward her position. Max catches several glimpses of David, as well as a few quick flashes of a wolf. Max hears David taunting nhim, and he fires in every direction when the voice says anything. He then finds Max a few feet away and gets a direct shot off.

Or not. David appears behind Max, and Max sees that he actually shot Roxanne. He rushes to her side, and she dies in his arms. Enraged and in grief, Max tries to shoot David, but he can't seem to do it. As Max approaches the boy, David shows, via flashbacks how his whispers killed everyone they met in the film.

when he finishes bragging, david tells Max to point the gun at his own head, or he will hear David's whispers in his head for eternity. Max places the gun next to his head, then moves it subtly to just behind his head. He fires the gun, and the blast renders him temporarily deaf.

Pretty clever! With no hearing, David can no longer control Max or influence his actions. David realizes what has happened, and looks genuinely terrified now. Ha! They both run outside, and Max grabs an axe before chasing David through the forest. The wolves follow Max, but he keeps tracking David.

He traps David, then pins him against a tree. As he raises the axe to kill the boy, Max suddenly sees a vision of Roxanne behind David. In every direction, Max now sees the ghosts of the others who were killed by David. They all drop to the ground, where it's revealed that they were really the wolves, approaching and surrounding Max.

The pack lunges at Max all at once, and he makes a last attempt to kill Max, by hurling the axe toward the boy. It goes flying through the air, before landing in David's forehead. Yay! without David to control them, the wolves all slink back into the woods. Max looks at David to make sure that he's actually dead, then he takes a rest on the ground to catch his breath.

In the last scene of the film, a sidewalk Santa is ringing his bell and asking for donations. A mystry man drops an attache case at Santa's feet, then keeps walking. Inside nthe case is the money that was used as David's ransom. Santa looks up, and Max just shrugs at him as he continues to walk down the sidewalk, THE END

Despite numerous plotholes, this one was pretty fun to watch. I liked it much more than that remake of The Omen a few years ago, and both have a very similar structure. I wish that they had expanded on the whole "angel" concept, though Some backstory flashbacks would nhave given the plot more to work with. But all in all, this was a fun one. 4 killer trees out of 5, with the hope nthat they do a sequel or prequel at some point.

And what did I learn from Whisper?

-Angels love murder.

-There's a reason why parents don't allow their kids to draw on the walls...the kids use the pictures to kill them.

-Whenever someone evil tries to get into your head, fire a gun next to your ear...it's foolproof.

My next film just arrived, a classic fromm 1992 called Dr. Giggles. It;s weird that it says 1992, because I can distictly remember seeing ads in magazines for this one when I was a senior in high school, in 1990. It must have sat on a shelf for awhile before going to theatres. Oh well, see y'all next week!